I mentioned a few posts back about discovering a passion for knitting about six months ago. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been six months – I feel like I’ve had knitting needles and yarn flying through my fingers for years now. In between all the mittens and hats and socks and other projects I’ve been doing, I’ve been working diligently on my Geek Square blanket. I’ve got nine squares done, and I figure I’m aiming for a blanket that’s 6×4 squares, or 24 squares in total.
They’re in the order I knitted them, from first at the bottom right to most recent at the top left: an aperture (from a video game called Portal, but I chose it for the association with my other passion, the camera); Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (“Don’t Panic!†was almost the tagline for this blog); 20-sided die from Dungeons & Dragons; Batman (for Beloved, my comic book guy); the Deathly Hallows from Harry Potter; the Hyrulean Shield from Zelda; Mario Kart; the logo from my favourite D&D playcast Critical Role; and the dragon ampersand from Dungeons & Dragons.
I might get it done some time this year – but, probably not.
As I mentioned, I stumbled across the geek-a-long blanket project when I was literally days into my new knitting habit. I didn’t know that double-knitting was considered challenging, so I followed a few tutorials and figured it out pretty quickly. Generally, a double-knitted square will have one set of colours on one side and the inverse on the other side, as you knit and purl double strands, throwing one colour to one side with a knit stitch and the other to the opposite side with a purl stitch. For the d20 square, I needed to figure out how to do “extreme†double knitting, where the two sides are different. So I did. For the first few squares, I’d count up the number of stitches in each colour and write them all out longhand as a road map for myself, but now I can follow along fairly easily with just a printout of the pattern and a ruler.
You might note that there are more D&D squares than anything else, in no small part because after a 30 year hiatus the game has become a big part of my life again – there’s definitely a post or three about THAT in the near future! It was the d20 pattern that led me to the Geek-a-long blanket in the first place, via Google Image search. They’ve been doing a knit-a-long blanket for the last several years, which is why they have such a great bank of patterns covering all sorts of geeky goodness, and I just found out that this year’s theme is ENTIRELY Dungeons & Dragons related – talk about serendipity!
For the Deathly Hallows (the triangle and circle pattern, from Harry Potter) and the Critical Role logo (the CR with a sword) I designed my own pattern using a website called Chart-Minder. The next one in my queue is also one I designed myself; can you tell what it is? I’ll probably start this square some time this week.
I’ve got a loose idea of where I’m going with the rest of the squares. I’ll be covering Star Wars in the next square, and I’ve got ideas for the Princess Bride, Pac Man, Pokemon, Minecraft, and a few other family fandoms. I’ve even got a spreadsheet with potential squares, what colours I’d need and what yarns I have in my stash. We’ll have to see what new D&D ideas appear and take those into account, too!
The only part that really concerns me is the joining of the squares. First, it’s going to be hella task just in and of itself. And some of those cast ons and cast offs are so tight I’m not sure I’ll be able to get a crochet hook in there, whatever method of joining the squares I use. I’ll be coming back to you guys for advice before I take on that task, I think. I’m not even sure what colour to use to join them all up; I think black is the likeliest choice.
I figure if I’m six months and nine squares into the project, at least I’m invested enough to keep working on it. Next stop, Millennium Falcon!